Falice Drabbles
by ForASecondThereWe'dWon
Summary: A collection of the Falice-centric drabbles I've previously posted on my Tumblr (forasecondtherewedwon), each based on one or multiple prompts, as requested by my followers. Drabble collections also available in Bughead, Varchie, Choni, and other flavours.
1. Games We Play

**Author's Note:**

From the "Writing Prompts" list, prompt 6: "You can't die. Please don't die."; prompt 7: "You did what?!"; prompt 8: "Were you ever going to tell me?"; and prompt 9: "Don't ask me that."

* * *

F.P. was twiddling the joystick as fast as he could, but the stupid yellow circle-swallower was even less maneuverable than his neighbour's shitty old motorbike (which F.P., being a fourteen-year-old boy, was still irrationally jealous of). He'd played this level poorly, that was for damn sure, but even with a quarter of the dots left glowing on the screen, spaced inconveniently in each of the four corners of the maze, he was hoping for Pac-Man to smarten the fuck up and start trying to help himself. Frantic changes of direction were doing him no good. The ghosts were closing in.

"You can't die. Please don't die," F.P. pleaded, leaning his forehead into the screen. It made a hollow _thunk_ like throwing a rock at an empty milk jug.

"Aren't you too old for this game?" Alice asked from behind him. She'd been sitting on that table a good 15 minutes watching him battle the ghosts and it was irritating the hell out of him.

"It's Pac-Man," he argued, frowning while that very creature dissolved into a 'Game Over' message.

"Which means what?" she persisted, additionally annoying him by swinging her foot into the back of his knee so that his leg nearly buckled.

"Which means…" F.P. sighed, deciding to abandon the game for now. How to defend something so simple and yet so… addictive? Maybe he _was_ getting a little old for it. "Don't ask me that," he said, hoping to end the conversation there. He pushed away from the game, shoving his fingers through his hair.

Alice was in the middle of swinging her foot again and F.P. caught it by the ankle right before it connected with his crotch. He gave her a look. She grinned.

"You wanna go somewhere?" she asked.

Exhaling tensely through his teeth, F.P. released her; smooth skin skimmed through his fingers. She'd asked innocently, as innocently as Alice was capable of doing anything, but it still inspired… certain thoughts.

"Are you finally sick of this place?" He smirked and crossed his arms, backing into the wall next to the Pac-Man machine. Alice snorted.

" _No_. You're the one who's always trying to get me out of here." She sprung from the table, bare feet smacking the floor before she put her shoes back on. "You wanna go get a slushie or something?"

F.P. ignored the question, narrowing his eyes at her. It was hard not to move with her, not to get swept up in Alice's whirlwind. She might have been born a Northsider, but the girl was a force of nature, with the bangs she'd cut herself and the dark eyeliner he knew she wasn't allowed to wear at home. She made his heart race, even if he wasn't ready to show it.

"So, you're giving up the Wyrm?"

Alice groaned, wanting to speed him up, he knew.

"If it's between the Wyrm and a popsicle or something, then yes! Goodbye, Wyrm!" she shouted. A few old guys sitting at the bar spared her a confused drunken glance.

"That's too bad," F.P. said casually, running his hand through his hair again to help him stay nonchalant, "'cause last night I asked if you could join the Serpents."

That stopped her in her tracks. Alice straightened up to school picture posture, drawing her chin in incredulously. She began shaking her head. F.P., smile spreading, nodded back at her just as insistently.

"You did what?!" she exclaimed and grabbed him by the arms, energy coming out of her like a rocket. F.P.'s mouth twitched as Alice held him to the wall. "Were you ever going to tell me?"

He tried to brush her off, but her grip only tightened. F.P. laughed, deciding to relax into it.

"I just told you," he pointed out.

"Yeah, after I sat around watching you lose at Pac-Man!"

"Hey!" His temper rose up like a threatened snake as she pushed away from him. Suddenly, she was back, leaning in with a huge smile on her face, pressing until his shoulders bumped the wall.

"I could kiss you!"

Not knowing if this was a genuine offer, F.P. begged his thoughts to quiet down and line up nicely like the dots in the game. Too late, wild Alice―his pet Serpent―was onto her next idea.

"Come on," she told him, grabbing his forearm. "You're buying me an ice cream."

He rolled his eyes, but let her drag him towards the door.

"Yeah right, you're buying _me_ one. I'm getting you into the gang."

"So you buy mine and I'll buy yours and we'll be even." Alice shrugged and took his hand.

"Ok," F.P. agreed, knowing full well that he would end up buying both.


	2. At Her Service

**Author's Note:**

From the "Writing Prompts" list, prompt 3: "I'm not jealous."

* * *

"You know, Alice," F.P. said, returning from delivering an order to stand across the counter from his erstwhile lover, "things have been good for me since I started working at Pop's."

"Uh huh," she replied unenthusiastically, keeping her eyes down on the _Register_ article she was marking up with red pen.

"That's right," he continued, undaunted. "Bills are paid on time, bike's always full of gas… I could take you for a ride after my shift." He was trying to keep cool, stay casual, but she wasn't making it easy. Alice always did know how to play hard to get. Like something she'd been born with.

"I don't think so, F.P." Still no eye contact.

He exhaled heavily, glanced up and down the quiet diner, then leaned forward on his elbows.

"I'm even thinking of moving," he sprung on her, hoping to get her attention. "Still within Riverdale, but someplace a little homier for Jughead. Man, did that boy ever pitch a fit the last time I mentioned leaving town." F.P. chuckled, but it quickly died when Alice persisted in ignoring him. Knowing he was being rude, he snapped his fingers in front of her face to break her concentration. Her eyes shot up angrily. "Come on, Alice, give me _something!_ "

"What is it that you want me to say, F.P.? Lots of adults buy houses. I myself own a house. I'm not jealous."

"For crying out loud, Alice!" He realized he was getting in the realm of shout-y and toned it down. "I'm not trying to make you jealous, I'm trying to make you see what a catch I am."

Ok, a little more arrogant than he'd been planning to play it, but things never did go to plan when he was around her. She got in his head and rewired his brain and he never noticed what was mixed up until days later. Alice sat back on her stool, capping her pen, and gave him an unabashedly long, assessing look. Deciding to go all in, F.P. spread his hands like he was the Fonz.

"A catch you say?"

It didn't sound like she was making fun of him, so that was a good sign.

"You bet," he affirmed. "I'm employed, I have a ride, and there's money in the Jones account at the Riverdale Central Bank."

"And you're on the market," Alice added, giving him a wink that he knew that _she_ knew would get to him.

"Small market," F.P. joked. "It's just you."

While he gave her a second to consider that (god, it was fun seeing Alice Cooper speechless), F.P. tore the paper wrapper off a straw and plunged it into the chocolate milkshake he'd served her fifteen minutes ago. She gave him a look while he took a long suck, but hey, he was sort of pouring his heart out here―in the adult way of pragmatically elucidating one's financial suitability―so Alice could at least let him wet the mouth dried by nervousness.

"Fine," she concluded, clearly fighting a smug smirk, "you can take me out, but you better impress me."

F.P. grinned much more openly.

"I know you were watching my butt when I took those burgers to the end booth," he informed her. "You're already impressed."


	3. Time on Her Side

**Author's Note:**

From the "Writing Prompts" list, prompt 43: "I am not losing you again!"

Time travel AU!

* * *

Hiram knew a guy. Well, he knew a guy, who knew a guy, who knew a guy. The point was that the connection was there. Alice needed it. So, she did like she'd always done and made it happen.

With Betty settled in Jughead's arms (and in his gang), Polly gone again to the farm with her sweet twins, and Hal in prison for the rest of his nature goddamn life (couldn't forget about that key piece in the bleach-soaked puzzle that was her family), Alice was as raw and dangerous to herself and others as she'd been as a teenager, rebounding from giving her baby up for adoption by jumping into the Serpents without a safety net. She drank―heavily―and she quit telling people she was fine in favour of telling them to fuck off. She embraced that confused, distressed teen Alice she had once been, this time knowing there was no understanding boyfriend to become her fiancé, then her husband when she flaked out or got sifted through the Southside cracks. It was her, alone with herself.

Alice began to wonder about things, during work hours when she stared at the wall and home hours when she stared at the glass in her hand. Things that had gone right, things that had gone wrong. She examined her life at sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, with the aid of her memory or, if she was too deep into the wine bottle, old photo albums. Looking at the faces of her children, her girls, was when the wall of glass was lifted between Alice and her reflections. The other baby, that was who she needed…

She had heard things, seen them on the news, had them whispered to her late at night when she passed out on the couch in front of the television. Advancements. Discoveries. Technology, not for the future, but for the past.

Drinking nothing but water for a week, Alice did like she'd taught her youngest to do so well: she read. When that was over, she accosted Hiram and bargained with the last chip she had. She offered to give up the _Register_. True, Lodge owned the business in an un-interfering sort of way, but they were both aware that she'd been maneuvering around that ownership since her stupid, hapless, serial killer asshole of a husband had sold it by working loopholes, making last minute changes, and pushing back against every bit of bias Hiram Lodge tried to breathe into the pages of her paper, riffling them with breath that stunk of the death of free speech.

It was enough. She offered. He accepted. She signed. He queried. She demanded. He knew a guy.

And now, Alice Cooper was going back in time.

The machine was in the New England area, but she would've driven farther. She didn't tell her daughters she was leaving. What would she have said, and why would she have bothered? Due to the nature of the trip, it wouldn't just be _as though_ she'd never left, it would be _exactly_ that way. For the first time in her life, Alice didn't pack. There wouldn't be a carry-on allowance or a baggage claim on the other side, after all.

The procedure, the journey, the change―all terms apparently for the same thing―was described and unfurled to her by the experts who'd taken Hiram Lodge's word as an incontestable order. No one so much as asked for her name, needing only far less personal things like the date she would like to arrive at and the measurement from the heel of her foot right into the nook of her crotch (to manufacture the unique bio-suit she'd be travelling in). It was all amazingly… simple. Alice passed the night before her departure curled under a sterile blanket in a completely decontaminated room. Her hair was filled with some kind of time-slipping chemical lubricant, her nose with the scent of it, but her head with thoughts of her son and how she was about to do more than any mother ever had for their child. Nothing less than that would be enough now. Not this time.

Later, Alice would remember not a bright light, but darkness like she'd never know. Enough fucking darkness to put to shame the eyeliner she'd worn heavy around her eyes everyplace but at home. Then she was there, at the hospital.

At first, she wasn't completely sure she had time traveled. Sure, she'd arrived back in Riverdale, but from the outside, the hospital looked the same. From the inside, the staff uniforms looked the same. Then Alice realized nobody in the waiting room was staring at a cell phone and she knew she'd gone back more than twenty years.

She figured that when looking to kidnap a child, minor crimes like stealing a set of wacky, outdated scrubs and impersonating a nurse seemed very reasonable in comparison, to the point of not really feeling illegal at all. Then, as in her own time, the place was overcrowded and understaffed, making it horrifyingly (or delightfully, for Alice) easy to sneak into the maternity ward.

It didn't hit her until she was standing over the sleeping baby― _her_ baby―that there were two of her in the hospital at that very moment. Even without the bonding time with her new infant, which she'd never experienced since adoption had been decided on before delivery, Alice (teen Alice) had stayed nearly a week. She'd been listless, then hysterical, ignoring Hal, then raging at him. It was so clear, so sharp in her mind as she reached out and brushed a careful finger over the toes of a little baby boy, the memory of longing to see a different face at her bedside. The face of the one who should've been there.

"I am not losing you again!" she promised the baby in a low voice.

Gathering her child in a soft blanket, Alice made slow, casual circuits of the room, trying not to show in her face any of the joy, fear, or restlessness she felt; if someone walked in, it had to look like she was just another nurse, calming one of several dozen babies. After a few peeks out of the door, the hallway had cleared and Alice moved swiftly. It was unusual for her not to make an entrance that demanded people stare, but she held her breath and got through it.

Outside, she talked an idling taxi into giving her a ride for free, claiming it was an emergency involving the newborn she was holding. The baby, already Alice's good little boy, woke up and starting squalling, adding guileless passion to the appeal and they were off, zipping towards the Southside.

Of course she went to F.P., though she made the cabbie drop her off at the bridge in case there were questions later, when she was gone, that might have consequences on her actions tonight. Alice knew the Jones trailer from the nights she'd climbed through the window of the smaller of the two bedroom. Good nights. Hanging out, listening to music turned up too high, creating the precious creature now asleep again in her arms. This would be the first time―and the only time, in any version of their history that existed―that F.P. would meet their son.

She paused, standing out there in the dark, and memorized the face peeking out of the blanket. With a sob, she held him closer to her heart, tilting her head up at the sky so tears wouldn't start rolling down her cheeks. If this worked out, she would see him tomorrow, and twenty years from now. Same thing.

Slipping a hand into the pocket of her stolen uniform, Alice extracted the surgical mask she'd also lifted from the hospital. Oddly, she'd been inspired by her husband's Black Hood alias, deciding to cover part of her face so F.P. wouldn't see the impossible resemblance between her and the girl he knew to be still alive in his time. His teenage self had spent too many hours tracing that girl's face under spellbound fingertips.

Scraping gravel from the grass, Alice bombarded his window, standing well back until he emerged, rubbing his eyes. _God_ , she thought, _F.P. in his teens_. He was as gorgeous as she'd remembered.

Although he'd evidently been expecting someone he knew (flopping out of his window unarmed, in his pajamas), F.P. was both too tough and too curious to flee. She'd been counting on that. Immediately, she showed him the baby, which was sufficient distraction for her to explain just enough that he would listen to her. This was his baby, recently delivered by his own Alice. No, Alice didn't know that the baby was here with him. No, he couldn't inform her of that fact. Actually, could he please find a way to keep the kid safe and, almost as importantly, secret? The baby would be in so much danger (two decades from now) if F.P. didn't agree to protect him.

It half-broke Alice's heart to discourage the boy from seeking out her younger self and attempting to build a family, but she had her other family to think of. If teen Alice didn't stay with Hal, she wouldn't get Polly, Betty, the twins, and the many good years they'd shared together as husband and wife, despite their rocky past and horrific future.

Because of the mask, Alice couldn't kiss the baby goodbye, but she whispered very softly that she loved him and would see him soon. Then, she placed him in the bare arms of his young father and turned her back on them, trying to think only of returning to the place where the team in the future would be waiting for her signal, transmitted through time by the bio-suit she still wore under the scrubs.

"Does he have a name?" F.P. called after her, making Alice turn. She smiled under her mask, knowing this baby need never be Charles, or Chic, but someone different. A name that at least one of his parents could choose.

"You name him," Alice suggested and started to walk away again. She paused. "Something normal," she added. F.P. wasn't listening though. He was staring at the baby in his arms.

And she left them, beginning to run, because the sooner she went, the sooner she would see them again.


	4. Pest Control

**Author's Note:**

From the "Writing Prompts" list, prompt 33: "I'm not going to stop poking you until you give me some attention." and prompt 53: "I'm flirting with you."

* * *

"Don't you have somewhere to be?" Alice complained, irritated that when she'd swivelled away from her computer, she'd found F.P. still straddling a chair backwards next to her dull grey filing cabinet.

His eyes scratched the ceiling as he appeared to consider his schedule. Already, he was missing the spirit of the question, which was GET THE HELL OUT.

"Nope. My shift at Pop's doesn't start for an hour and a half."

"Perhaps you've lost track of time," Alice suggested stiffly, eyes willing him to vacate the premises.

"That's very thoughtful of you, Alice," F.P. said with a grin. "Do you have a clock I could consult?"

From a distance of about five feet, Alice let him see the watch on her wrist. And the extended middle finger on the hand above it.

"You know," he said in a calm tone, reminding Alice that the belief that she had the power to offend him was only wishful thinking, "the press is supposed to serve the people. I came in here to report a legitimate crime."

"Some punk stealing 30-year-old laminated menus from Pop's during your shift yesterday is _barely_ a crime," Alice replied scornfully. "Besides, this," she waved a hand around to indicate the _Register_ office, "is not a police station."

"Well, Alice, from one arrestee to another, that is not as fun a place to hang out."

Alice rotated swiftly away from him, smiling down at her keyboard as soon as she knew he couldn't see her face. This was… silly. It was unprofessional. She took a deep breath. _Ignore him_ , she told herself. _Ignore him and he'll go away_.

As she was spellchecking an email to a new freelance photographer she was thinking about hiring to do the accompanying shots to an upcoming front page piece, something jabbed sharply into her back.

"F.P.," she grit out, "I swear to god I will staple your nostrils shut if you do not get the hell out of my office."

"Do you still get to call it _your_ office? I thought this place belonged to Hiram Lodge."

 _Ooh_ , she could wring his neck. She forced her muscles to relax. Went back to proofing the email.

Another stab, just left of her spine. Alice closed her eyes as vicious passions boiled in her.

"I have an idea," she offered quietly. "Why don't I call the police on _you_ and that way you won't have to worry about meeting up with them later to report the theft?"

"If you wanna see me in handcuffs, Alice, we can skip the messy scene where I get manhandled into the back of a squad car."

"Oh, but that's my favourite part," she said with a sarcastic sigh.

F.P. laughed, a sound Alice was infuriatingly attracted to, and then blissfully, miraculously, there was silence. Her shoulders relaxed.

Just in time to be prodded. Alice spun in her chair to see F.P. still in his, the yardstick she used for double-checking margins in his hand. He grinned, evidently getting over the fact that he'd just been caught in the act with astounding rapidity.

"I'm not going to stop poking you until you give me some attention," he informed her.

Alice half-groaned, half-shrieked in exasperation.

"What is this, take your kid to work day?"

"I'm not sure, but you know who would know? Fred. He used to do that with Archie every year when the kids were in elementary school. You remember that? Oh, remember that one time he―"

"IT WAS RHETORICAL!"

F.P. held his hands up in a defensive gesture.

"If there isn't any," Alice spat, chest heaving, "other way," she dug her fingers into her thighs, "that this office can serve you, I suggest that you leave."

"How can you serve me?" F.P.'s eyebrows rose even faster than his self-assured smile. "Damn, Alice. I've been waiting too long to hear you ask me that."

"That is harassment," she informed him, getting to her feet to point a stern finger down at him.

"I'm flirting with you," he shot back, spreading his arms in a very _what gives?_ manner.

"That's it," Alice declared sharply. "Come with me."

She strode towards the rear door, heels clacking like furious rain on a pane of glass. F.P.'s more plodding steps told her he'd followed. Throwing the heavy door open, Alice stepped out into the alley that ran behind the block of businesses. She didn't let it swing shut too early, giving F.P. a fighting chance to catch its weight before it could smack into his face.

"If you're planning to toss me in the dumpster," he started, "I think you're going to need someone to―"

Alice bunched the front of F.P.'s jacket (denim, not leather since he'd finally quit the gang) in her hands and shoved him back against the brick wall, her lips going fast and hard for his. He grunted in a way that she could only classify as confused horniness before yanking her body to his and inverting their places, one hand scrambling up into her hair.

"I don't want to see," she threatened between hot kisses, "your face here again."

"How about a compromise? I'll take you―" F.P. paused to emit a low groan when Alice bit his neck. "―for dinner on Friday."

"You'll take me for breakfast tomorrow," she countered, gasping when F.P. groped her ass and held her to him as he rolled his hips, "and you'll take me to bed tonight."

"I thought we were compromising? None of that is designed to make me suffer," he pointed out, hand slipping up the back of her blouse.

"Shut me up so I can't change my mind," Alice suggested, using the collar of his Pop's uniform shirt to tug F.P.'s mouth back to hers.


	5. She's Made Her Bed

**Author's Note:**

From the "Writing Prompts" list, prompt 68. "Oh my god! You're in love with them!" (Altered to "... in love with me!")

Beware the rating increase!

* * *

Alice exhaled heavily, pushing her hair away from her forehead. Strands that had been nicely curled at home when she was getting ready now felt like they'd been thoroughly windswept by a tornado, or a hurricane, or a monsoon, or some other force of nature. Next to her, F.P. moaned the moan of a deeply satisfied man and rolled towards her, grabbing her inner thigh. She planned to ignore him, having made a habit of being mean to F.P. beginning immediately after sex to prevent him from thinking this was actually some kind of relationship beyond the kind where she showed up, they banged, and she took off still buttoning her blouse while he leaned against the kitchen counter drinking a beer and wearing baggy jeans with nothing on underneath them.

Instead, in what she told herself was moment of weakness, Alice let F.P. drag her back in, kissing him deeply and feeling him against her hip when she teased her tongue into his mouth. His hand crept higher, higher, but she abruptly pulled away and started to battle her legs free of the tangled sheet that had, somehow, been dragged from the bed and onto the floor of F.P.'s trailer bedroom. Likely around the same time Alice had dragged _him_ to the floor, sick of the sound of squeaky springs.

Grabbing the t-shirt he'd slung over the back of a chair half an hour ago when she'd demanded he take it off, Alice immodestly dressed herself while F.P. stared up at her from the floor, getting comfortable with an arm propped under his head.

"You look almost as good in my shirt as in nothing at all," he complimented, reaching out to trace her foot with his finger, making Alice jerk with ticklishness.

"I really don't know how to respond to that," she answered harshly as she leaned forward, starting to tuck in the edges of the fitted sheet.

"Alice, come on," F.P. pleaded, hand sliding up her calf while he continued to lay immobile at her feet. "Come back to… floor."

"You should really change your sheets," she chastised, ignoring his request and continuing to tuck.

"I don't wash 'em 'til they stop smelling like you."

Feeling a little tug in her chest, Alice paused and looked down at the man she'd known for decades. Warm brown eyes encouraged her to keep looking. So did the way he (strategically, she was sure), pushed the sheet down his body to reveal his bare torso.

"Well that's…" Alice licked her dry lips. "… unhygienic."

"I'd wash 'em more if you came over more often. Then I wouldn't need the scent because I'd have the real thing."

Her lip trembled as something good and hopeful inside her surged. Unacceptable. Mercilessly, Alice bent down and yanked the sheet her sex-and-sex-only buddy was partially cocooned in. His naked skin smacked the floor and he sat up, narrowing his eyes at her.

Putting her back to him, Alice snapped the sheet as much as she was able with how soft their sweat and heat had made it and laid it across the bed.

"Al," F.P. tried again, slipping his hand under the hem of the shirt she wore to stroke her ass as Alice walked by him to tuck in the other side of the bed. "What are you doing?"

"Making your bed."

F.P. groaned loudly, throwing his head back and letting his hands smack the floor as he remained sitting on it. That sound. That posture. Jesus. It made Alice want to crawl to him and settle herself in his lap. But it was just sex. _That_ was the feeling she was craving right now, not closeness for the sake of intimacy or anything so ridiculous.

"Oh my god," she heard him exclaim as she repositioned his pillows. Instinctively, Alice turned, in case he'd managed to hurt himself just sitting there because he was that much of a moron. "You're in love with me!"

Her mouth fell open as their eyes met. Then she was adamantly shaking her head, fluffing the pillows like her life depended on it.

"No. You know I'm not. Don't flatter yourself," she recommended, babbling out her denial.

F.P. sprung to his feet, standing across from her on the opposite side of the bed.

"You're making my bed! You never do anything for anybody!"

"What about what I just did for you?" Alice let her expression go sexy, relaxing her shoulders and dipping her chin. "Remember that?" Her gaze dropped to his hips. Looked to her like he remembered perfectly well.

She stalked around the bed towards him, skimming her fingers across the replaced sheet. Without a shirt on, F.P.'s excitement was obvious, his chest rising and falling in great swells. There was that other obvious swell too.

"You were standing about… there." She touched her palm to his bare hip and have him a little push backwards. "And where was I?" Alice asked him, stepping close and rubbing her lips over his ear. "In this very spot, except on my knees…"

Damn him, he caught on before she could complete the re-enactment.

"God, Alice," F.P. said with a grin that was inches from her own closed lips. "You nearly got me. But I don't distract as easily as I used to."

"So that's why you haven't managed to kill yourself riding that motorcycle?" she snapped back, heart banging anxiously when she felt his caress at her waist.

F.P. chuckled.

"Give it up, Alice. I'm wise to you now."

Where his hand had touched and gently smoothed, now it was taking hold of the fabric of his shirt. Taking hold and pulling up. Alice's eyes flashed.

"What are you doing?"

Slowly, so slowly, F.P. inclined his face towards her and licked his lips before he spoke.

"I'm gonna make you say it," he vowed as the shirt came up to her chest. "Make you say you love me."

"You can try," she challenged, raising her arms to be undressed, "but this is just sex. That's all it is."

"You'll feel better once you say it," he promised, licking her throat and making her feel the fine scrape of his stubble, like the less important of two itches she currently needed scratched.

"And if I don't say it?" Alice asked, running her hands down F.P.'s chest while he grabbed her hips and backed her towards the bed.

He grinned.

"You'll feel better anyway."

As she fell back and gripped F.P.'s shoulders while he moved over her, Alice, flushed, studied the face of the man she'd had her first crush on. The man whose baby she'd delivered. The man with whom she'd maintained a whipping, brutal banter with definite sexual undertones for years after they'd banished themselves to their respective sides of town. The man who was there for her, legal or illegal, day or night―more often night, lately. He deserved more, Alice thought as he sunk into her, kissing her face and breathing in her ear. He deserved to know.

Depending on his performance, she might even tell him.

Smiling to herself, Alice clamped her thighs to F.P.'s hips and rolled to put herself on top.


	6. It's Blondie, Baby

**Author's Note:**

From the "Writing Prompts" list, prompt 71: "You are the single best thing that has ever happened to me." and prompt 89: "You're the best part of me."

* * *

It wasn't easy when her mother kicked her out. Alice stood on the curb in suburbia at dawn with snot running from her nose and eyes burning from crying all night. She tugged the hem of her cut-off Blondie t-shirt where it kept rising up over the mini bulge she'd been hiding for the past three months.

"You're the best part of me," she whispered through a wet sob, kissing her hand and rubbing it over the swell of her DIY baby habitat. Closing her eyes, Alice pictured the baby floating around in there, drifting like a flake of fake snow in a snow globe.

She bent and lifted the handle of her suitcase. The backpack that represented the rest of her earthy possessions was already on her back, straps digging into her shoulders. It was too heavy, mostly cassette tapes without cases, socks without mates, and t-shirts without sleeves. A lot of the t-shirts were F.P.'s, but Alice had packed them in favour of her own, unwilling to leave anything of him in the house she vowed then and there to never again enter.

 _Leave quietly_ , her mother had said. _Don't wake the neighbours. People around here work for a living._

Alice took as big a breath as she could (quitting smoking six months ago had really helped with that) and turned to face her former home.

"FUUUUUCK YOUUUUUU!" she wailed, erupting with sound until dogs started to bark.

Then, Alice adjusted her load and decamped for the Southside, looking for a place to live and someone to love her―not necessarily in that order. When she reached Sunnyside trailer park, F.P. was already crunching through industrial-strength weeds towards her, rubbing his eyes. Alice didn't believe in fate or magic or even déjà vu, but she couldn't have said how he knew. He just did. Her eyes remembered how to make tears again as soon as she saw him and he folded her into his arms, carrying her inside while she sloppily wept and let the suitcase she was still holding bang steadily against F.P.'s knees.

The first day was a fucking mess. The first week was worse. It was Alice unpacking her bags and staring at the contents, feeling like nothing meant anything to her. It was Alice repacking her bags in tears, forgetting half the shit she had strewn all over F.P.'s trailer. It was F.P. wrenching her suitcase out of her hands, speaking to her in a low voice that demanded she have a drink of water and sit down on the couch. It was F.P. tossing her backpack out the door into the trailer park's communal front yard, screaming at her to just leave, just fucking leave, if she really didn't want to be there with him.

By the first month, everything settled. That included Alice's stomach, which, in terms of the stability of their relationship, was maybe the best thing of all, because F.P. hated the sight of vomit. They didn't really know what to do and watching _Happy Days_ with feet that always felt hot and awkward propped on the arm of the couch wasn't helping Alice figure it out. What did help was the money F.P. brought in, going out day after day to get a lift to work with his best buddy, Freddie Andrews.

The money helped them buy five different flavours of baby mush in precious little jars they stacked in the kitchen cupboard they'd cleared out especially. After they had to throw all those precious little jars away a month and a half later because they'd bought baby food way too soon and it had all gone rancid, the money helped them with other stuff. It helped get bottles and creams. It helped get blankets and tiny socks that F.P. would secretly extract from their baby cache in the middle of the night to marvel at. It helped get mud and wood filler and paint to patch their shabby abode so they could make a good first impression on the little wiggler in Alice's volleyball abdomen. It helped get pregnancy-safe stomach medicine when Alice went to use the bathroom without knowing F.P. had painted it and ended up ralphing her lunch out the high window, standing on the toilet to escape the paint fumes.

Money helped make them careful, like experience would've. It helped make them smart, like school couldn't. It helped make them secure, and sure, and happy, like Alice's folks wouldn't.

Paper, check. Rock? They listened to more and more, dancing around the trailer day or night, sometimes both, ecstatic just to be together, one of F.P.'s hands always on the small of Alice's achy back, the other always on the bump.

Five months into their cohabitation and eight months into the pregnancy, Alice screamed bloody murder from the bathroom, water breaking as she lifted her leg over the edge of the tub to get in the shower. F.P. came running. It was time for scissors.

If their time finally being together as a couple had gone by quickly, labour was their lives on fast-forward. Apparently, their baby was the only person in the world (besides the two of them) actually eager to be with F.P. and Alice. They named their boy Harry Christopher Jones, after Blondie's singer and guitarist. F.P. wasn't thrilled about 'Harry' at first, wanting to name the kid after himself, but Alice had given him a fierce glare. As the minutes passed, watching the tiny guy in his mom's arms, the name grew on F.P.

He forgot he was standing until a nurse wheeled him over a chair and he felt it jam into the back of his knees, stumbling into the seat. F.P. pulled himself forward with the tacky bottoms of his worn black sneakers and gently peeled the blanket away from his son's sleeping face.

"Woah," he whispered, then turned to give Alice a kiss she smiled too hard into, making his lips find mostly the flat fronts of her teeth.

He stroked her hair then slipped the scrunchie from her wrist and did his best to form a ponytail. A little crooked, but not bad.

"You are the single best thing that has ever happened to me," he told Alice. Her face crumpled like she was going to cry, but she breathed instead, determined not to jostle the baby. "And," F.P. added, rubbing a finger across the soft fuzz on Harry's head, "you're the, um, double best thing."

Alice stroked his face with the back of her fingers, but she had no idea what he'd meant.

"What?"

He raised his eyebrows at her.

"Like burgers," F.P. explained. "Single is one patty, double is two."

"That's what our family is to you?" Alice asked, a tear escaping silently from the corner of her eye. "A hamburger?"

F.P.'s mouth opened and he droned a stupid, "Uhhhh…Sorry, Al. I meant like―"

She smiled knowingly.

"I know what you meant. Hamburgers are your favourite things in the world. It's a compliment," Alice translated as he nodded.

"You're a little bit wrong though," he pointed out with a smirk, eyes drawn again to the baby. He could've sworn the kid already had his girlfriend's cheekbones. "Hamburgers were my favourite things." F.P. squeezed Alice's hand. " _Were_."


	7. Dear Alice

**Author's Note:**

From the "Writing Prompts" list, prompt 44: "I don't know why I'm crying."

* * *

It was the most inane, lowbrow recommendation Alice Cooper had ever had the misfortune of receiving in her inbox. The higher ups (Hiram's suited 'experts' in the big city newspaper biz, guiding her paper with their little 'suggestions' since Lodge had bought it from Hal) had decided that the best way to charm small town readers and keep their own numbers in the black was to introduce a little 'neighbours helping neighbours' type of column.

Once a week, in the Saturday edition, advice would be offered on problems within the Riverdale community; not big problems like serial killer husbands―oh no, nothing reeking so hideously of personal failure and the endless possibilities for suburbia's disappointments―but tiny ones. My child's having trouble making friends. My neighbour's building a fence on my side of the property line. My husband's not interested any more. How do I establish good rapport with my kid's teacher? How can I spice things up in the bedroom? How, how, how. Help, help, help.

Alice argued. She pleaded. She practically tore her hair out. Then, she sucked it up and posted a notice a week before the suits wanted the new column to appear, soliciting the absurd troubles of friends and strangers alike. The suits told her she could hire someone to be the _Register_ 's very own Dear Abby. Ha. As if she had the money. Dear Alice would have to do.

All week long, the responses flooded in, citizens eager to have their problems heard and addressed. Keen to be petted and praised and handled with patience and benevolence. Alice had to talk herself down from keeping a large bottle of wine in her filing cabinet. There were too many secrets people wanted to confess (which she didn't want to hear). Too many attempts made to ask for advice yet keep control themselves (which she didn't want to negotiate). Too many goddamn whiners in this fucking town!

Thursday night rolled around and Alice still hadn't made a selection, let alone started on the thoughtful, thorough, and perky reply she would be expected to provide. She locked the door of the _Register_ office and stared at her tired face, reflected in the glass for her against the dark backdrop of the quiet-streeted night.

The phone rang and Alice strode with something less than a brisk professionalism back to her desk to answer. Even though she didn't want to be polite. Even though it was long after public hours.

"Hello?"

"Am I too late to submit my question for the new advice column?"

Alice's eyes narrowed.

"F.P., is that you? Are you screwing with me?" She pressed the phone harder to her ear.

"Hey! I'm looking for advice, Al. Just tell me, am I too late?"

She let her gaze sweep the deserted office a few times before answering with the greatest reluctance.

"No."

"Ok, well you write it down if you want, or just remember it. Whatever you want," he repeated. Alice frowned in confusion at his earnest tone.

"Fine, F.P., but―"

"Just don't interrupt," he requested. Alice wanted to snap back at him, but a heavy sigh traveled down the line and she stood still and silent instead.

"Go ahead," she urged softly, really clutching the phone now.

"There's this girl― _woman_ ," he corrected himself. "Boy, I bet you've heard a million like this." His laugh, rough and pure, made Alice's heart thump a little harder. "Anyway, I knew her a couple lifetimes ago, teenage romance, you know? It was a real mess―well, it wasn't, _I_ was―and I screwed it up so badly that I drove this girl― _woman_ ―away about as far as you can drive a person away with both of you still living in the same small town. But I'll spare you the details of the youth of a mixed up kid too stubborn to pick up the phone or walk a mile to their spot on the river―his and the girl's."

"Woman's," Alice gently corrected, feeling a tremble in her chin.

"Right," F.P. agreed, with no rebuff for her intrusion. "So she gets married, and I get married, and we have kids that belong to other people and we're still not talking because," Alice heard the sound of F.P. scratching fingernails through his scruff, the way he did when he was nervous or just tongue-tied, "over the years, we've just gotten so goddamn good at it. Eventually, neither one of us is so very married anymore, but it's been so long that whatever we are now is defined by how hard we've shoved each other way, rather than the tenderer times we had as a pair of dumb kids. Stupid," Alice's breath hitched as she heard him laugh weakly, "but head over heels in love in a way everybody could see."

His voice faded into nothing and the air hung between them, Alice standing alone in her office. F.P. wherever it was F.P. went these days since he'd quit the gang for good. Alice sniffed.

"So, what's your question?" Without really paying it much attention, she plucked a pen from her desk and clicked it repeatedly, trying not to look down so the water wouldn't dribble out of her eyes.

"I wanna know…" A deep, shaky inhale. "…if you think this woman could love me again. If it is possible, in your professional, highly respected opinion, for this woman to love me again."

Alice's lips parted and a sob leapfrogged up her throat. The pen clattered down on the desk, rolling to wedge under the keyboard.

"While you're thinking…" F.P.'s low voice requested. Alice closed her eyes and let herself be soothed by it. "…why don't you turn off your light? I bet your eyes are tired."

Her fingers hovered over the switch.

"I should finish…" she said, hesitating.

"You've been working too late, Al," he protested.

"I have nobody to go home to," she confessed at a whisper.

"Just turn off the light."

Alice obeyed, blinking as her gaze moved from the switch to the office's front window. Eyes on the dark she could now see clearly into, Alice hung up the phone and walked, dreamlike, to the door. She flipped the lock and F.P. walked in.

"You never told me," she accused without the usual bite she reserved specifically for conversations with the man before her, the man now reaching out, now taking her hands in his.

F.P. swung his head into a tilt and gave her a look.

"Took you twenty years to ask to hear what I wanted to say."

Alice looked down at her perfect nude heels, face scrunching like a bad idea tossed into a wastepaper basket. Her tears ran, free.

"I don't know why I'm crying," she admitted to F.P., looking up with a wet smile and an unconvincing shrug.

He pulled her tightly into his arms and she cried hard and happily into his neck.

"Because you're still that girl," he explained, rubbing her back.

"Mixed up?" she choked out sarcastically.

"No. Mine."


	8. A Surprising Kind of Love

**Author's Note:**

From the "Writing Prompts" list, prompt 58: "I've been in love with you my entire life. Ever since the day I first met you."

* * *

"I've been in love with you my entire life," F.P. admitted, feeling Alice's neck roll across his out-flung arm. "Ever since the day I first met you."

Tilting his head at an unnatural angle, he noticed a hole in the sock on the foot he had hanging out of the sleeping bag they'd opened up and crawled under in the bed of his truck. Alice was quiet tonight, so F.P. sighed loudly into the silence and went back to staring at the sky.

"When was it again?" he asked, as though the memory wasn't one of the few that seemed to define him as a person. One of those that almost felt like it had found him, cut him out of a sheet of paper, and stood him up to make him three-dimensional for the first time. A guy didn't forget a memory like that.

"Oh yeah," F.P. said when Alice didn't reply. "First day of high school. 'Member that?" This time, he didn't give her the chance to answer. It would hurt something tender inside of him―hurt like an awful splinter you couldn't get out―if she didn't care or worse, if it had never been worth remembering to her.

"It was a real friendly meeting. I could tell we were going to get along right away. I mean," F.P. paused to stretch his neck side to side, "if it wasn't the way you elbowed through three of my buddies to get to your locker, it was definitely how you kicked my backpack out from in front of it."

He laughed as he pictured her at fourteen. Neat blonde hair. White collared shirt. No bruises, no scars, no bags under her eyes from late nights or aggressive thinness from a family that didn't make enough to feed her, or just didn't care enough to pay attention. In short, the furthest damn thing from a Serpent he'd ever seen.

"Yep," F.P. said, picking up verbally where he'd left off mentally, "between the time your neat little sneaker struck my bag and when you snapped, 'Stay on your own side, Serpent scum,' I was madly in love." He chuckled again.

"Of course," he continued, watching the thin layer of clouds brush the deep, dark blue of the sky between them and the stars, "after that, you really got fun. You were swearing like crazy because―" F.P. interrupted himself with the force of his laughter, finding Alice's shoulder under the sleeping bag and tugging her closer to him in an attempt at warmth… and to avoid hard feelings. "―because the pain in your toes had set in from kicking the dumbbell you didn't know was in my bag."

"The only thing that pissed you off more than finding out we had homeroom together was having to miss it as you hobbled to the nurse's office with your shoe in your hand and your toes turning black and purple," he reminded her, eyebrows pulling together in sympathy. "I went with you―offered to carry you and… hell… you looked at me like I'd just offered to cut the brakes on your car. You wouldn't even let me carry the shoe."

"Now, why would I like a girl like that?" he wondered aloud with a smile on his face, feeling Alice's warm breath creep down his chest as she nestled closer. "You weren't like any Southside girl I'd ever known―you were a whole helluva lot worse. What I can't remember as precisely is when it stopped being you who was always trying to slip me and became me who was trying to slip you."

"And then…" F.P. sighed heavily, feeling like if he exhaled hard enough, he could blow those wispy little night clouds right out to the ocean. "…there was that freaky overlap where neither of us was trying to slip the other and we collided with a force like…" For a handful of seconds, he was at a loss for words. He stared more intensely at his cosmic view for inspiration. "It was like the force that knocks out one of those stars up there." F.P. gestured with the arm not encircling Alice. "Like a lightbulb that just burns and burns and burns and then pops. Is that how it works?"

He knew he was being stupid now, stupid and flowery, and that he should leave the wordsmithing to his boy and try to act like an adult. F.P. had a tough time helping it though; a night out here with Alice? After so many years of giving each other crap and secretly being jealous of each other's spouses? Probably he should be playing this night much cooler.

"But I always loved you," he said again, his heart striking a hard line through the idea of letting that sentiment go another twenty years unexpressed. "I loved you when we were fighting, and when we were stealing, and when we were making love, and when we were breaking into cars―I heard somewhere you taught your daughter that particular skill, by the way." F.P. laughed to himself and pulled his extremities in under the sleeping bag.

Not a cold night, but the temperature of his skin was finally starting to drop after their repeated vigorous activities. He hadn't gone so many rounds tonight to make Alice report him as a medical miracle, but not so few that he wasn't smugly, mannishly proud of himself either.

"I just loved you," F.P. repeated. Somehow, he couldn't quit saying it now. "I woke up in the morning, every morning, and I had to see you. I _still_ love you."

Finally, faintly starting to panic at the thought of how much he'd talked, F.P. turned his face away from the endlessness above him and looked at Alice. Alice, who was so beautiful. Alice, who had been so self-possessed at fourteen that she'd managed to possess him too.

Alice, who was… asleep.

"You've _got_ to be kidding me," F.P. mumbled in disbelief, running the backs of his fingers across her cheek.

"I am," she said.

Her eyes flew open and he jerked hard, banging his head against the inside wall of the truck bed. "What the FUCK, Alice?!" he yelped. She was laughing like he hadn't seen her do in ages. Decades.

"Well," she explained, laying a hand on his chest as he frowned severely at her, "at first, I didn't want to embarrass you." The emotion in Alice's eyes was rarely pleading or earnest, but it was both right now as he stared into them. "You never did like to share about your feelings." He just glared at her. "But then," she went on with a coy grin, "I didn't want you to think I'd fallen asleep because you'd done such a thorough job of… exhausting me."

Alice gave him a wink that might not have been so highly sexual on its own, but combined with the way her hand smoothed quickly down his stomach to stroke between his legs… yeah, it came across pretty sexual.

"Goddammit," he muttered, squeezing his eyes shut. "I should've dropped out of school after eighth grade and never met you."

"Definitely," Alice readily agreed, working her hand into a steady rhythm. "I've never seen any evidence to suggest you learned anything at high school anyway."

"Oh," F.P. challenged, opening his eyes (gradually, like a normal person and not like a psycho), "I'll show _you_ what I've learned."

He gripped the back of Alice's neck and kissed her fiercely. Unlike their first kiss―another favoured memory of his―he hoped this one wouldn't end in a sharp and surprising left-handed punch to his face.


	9. Going to Pieces

**Author's Note:**

From the "Writing Prompts" list, prompt 22: "That's irrational." and prompt 20: "Just admit I'm right."

* * *

For F.P., the puzzle had become less about trying to fit the pieces together and more about seeing how many he could flip into the empty chip bowl. When Alice had called earlier and told him in bedroom tones that she was bringing them something fun for the evening, he'd thought _handcuffs_. Or maybe some sort of exciting lingerie she'd have concealed under a trench coat. Those fell into the category of 'fun.' A 1000-piece puzzle of the 20th century's 100 greatest novel covers most definitely did not.

Another toss, another piece in the bowl.

"Quit it," Alice snarled at him, elbows on the table and hands yanking back her hair as she stared at the partially-completed puzzle.

"I'm bored."

"You could help."

"I'm bored _because_ I was helping."

"Even then you weren't helping," Alice complained, digging the pieces he'd artfully discarded out of the bowl. "I'd rather not have this puzzle smelling like Doritos forever."

"You won't have to smell it if you throw it in the trash where it belongs," F.P. suggested, snatching another handful of pieces off the table and scraping his chair around so he could start flicking them backwards over his shoulder. A little variety.

Alice scoffed.

"It's _beautiful_ ," she argued, "it's just… complicated."

F.P. leaned back into her, making Alice's arm slip as she moved to secure a piece.

"I've been saying that about you my whole life."

"You know," she said humourlessly, "I think you get funnier in the wee hours. That explains why you're so intolerable all day long."

He grinned, unfazed by her insult. Taking pot-shots at each other was their equivalent of cuddling.

"A lot of things about me can be more enjoyable in the middle of the night," F.P. said lowly, trying to burrow his face into her neck. "Of course, I'd rather be waking up to do them then staying up all night."

He drew back and yawned loudly.

"What time is it anyway?"

"3:30, last I checked."

" _Fuck_."

"Oh, come on," Alice baited him. "The former Serpent King is going to be defeated by a thousand little pieces of cardboard?"

"'Course not. But maybe I'll just―" he yawned again as he rose from his chair, "―go lie on the couch for a while and consider the puzzle from a distance."

"I don't think so." Alice grabbed him by the waist of his jeans and yanked him back to the table.

"Careful, Al," F.P. warned. "You might actually turn me on after all this torture."

"Just give it another look, would you?" she pleaded. He could see the fatigue around her eyes and so, very reluctantly, swung his gaze back to the puzzle.

"Jesus, this thing gives me an instant migraine."

F.P. smoothed a thumb over _Moby-Dick_ and _A Passage to India_ , thinking―as well as he could think when it was approaching four in the morning. Suddenly, an idea.

"We gotta turn the whole thing over. Get up," he instructed, pulling at Alice's shoulders.

"What? We can't do that! That's irrational! The pieces don't interlock tightly enough and―"

Grabbing one edge, F.P. flipped the entire thing like the world's crumbliest pancake. And yes, many pieces did fall out, but now the image was brown, wonderful brown! Flat, colourless, imageless cardboard backing.

"Just admit I'm right," he counselled.

"If this doesn't work, I'm going to murder you," she said, staring in horror at the remnants of their evening, night, and early hours of effort. "Call this fair warning."

"Shovel's in the closet with the broom and the spare batteries if you have to bury my body," he muttered, beginning to collect pieces and lay them out across his palm. "Get some quicklime, but don't buy it in Riverdale. And don't take your usual route home."

F.P. spied orange dust on a couple of pieces and covertly swiped it away.

"I was right," Alice declared, "you do get funnier when you're slightly delirious."

"Oh what fun we've had," he emotionlessly replied, screwing a knuckle into one of his bleary eyeballs.

Around an hour and a half later, their sand-coloured masterpiece was complete. F.P. would've promptly dropped his arm to the table and swept the whole thing off the edge if Alice hadn't been standing there with him looking so exhausted.

"Go rest for a while. The sun's not even up yet," he told her, kissing her mouth gently and repeatedly.

"Come on then." Alice grabbed his hand, her grip loose.

"Nah, I'm going to stay up. One of us needs to be awake to make sure you get home by 7:30."

He released her hand and watched it flop against her thigh. He sighed. Those thighs. Those damn, jean-covered thighs. Stupid fucking puzzle.

"When will you sleep?"

"After you head out. Jughead's always late getting home when he stays over at Archie's. Fred won't send him packing until he's had lunch there. There will be plenty of time for me to sleep."

"If you're sure."

Alice hated to give in to anything, F.P. knew, but her eyelids kept plunging like sinking ships. He could stay awake a little longer if it meant knowing she was safe in his bed and not driving home totally wiped out.

She paused on her staggering way towards his bedroom.

"What are we going to tell the kids? Betty will never accept that I was here twelve hours doing a puzzle."

"Maybe she'll still be sleeping when you get in and you can pretend like you came home earlier."

They caught each other's eye.

"Yeah right," Alice said, making F.P. snort out a laugh. "She'll be up. That girl is a whirlwind of activity; you remember what I was like at her age."

"Sure. You didn't have the hobbies of an 80-year-old."

Alice smiled the sleepy smile that was one of his favourites on her.

"Seriously though, what do we say?"

F.P. scratched his fingers through his hair.

"I guess… we tell them we had sex. They'll never believe anything else."

"Somehow, that is not one of the lies I ever thought we'd tell our children."

He grinned.

"Right. Next time, less interesting lie, more interesting activity."

Alice walked back to him, letting F.P.'s slightly sluggish arms catch her weight as she sagged into his chest.

"Promise," she said, kissing his heart over his t-shirt.


	10. He's Still Got Her Number

**Author's Note:**

From the "Writing Prompts" list, prompt 86: "I got you a present."

* * *

"Comfortable?" F.P. asked, on his couch next to Alice, but not yet relaxed back into it.

She shifted, a critical expression on her face, then shot him a look complete with raised eyebrow.

"Relatively."

F.P. grinned and sank into the corner, arm along the couch's back.

"Great. I got you a present."

"F.P…."

As quickly as he could, F.P. glanced away from Alice's face. It was where she would broadcast her disapproval, her concern, maybe even her distaste and, truth be told, their relationship was still feeling a little too fragile for him to see that today―even though it wasn't _his_ birthday. It was hers. He wriggled his fingers into the front pocket of his best pair of jeans, retrieving the surprise and presenting it to her in his open palm.

Her eyes went from the gift to his face. Admittedly, it was a little underwhelming at first sight. F.P. knew that and was prepared to be patient.

"You _got_ me a present? More like _found_." Alice took his wrist to examine the crumpled thing he held up for her, as if she was afraid he would fling it at her or try to stuff it down the neck of her shirt if she didn't keep him in check with a tight grip. "What did you do, dig up a lunch box time capsule?"

He laughed, his own gaze dropping to the soft folded paper. It might be called worse for wear, in the sense that the corpse parts ol' Frankenstein used to build his monster had been worse for wear.

"Close," F.P. owned. "I discovered it in the pocket of those leather pants I used to wear."

"I loved those pants," they said in unison, spoken nostalgically on his part, with maybe a touch of lust on hers. Or he just had hopeful ears.

"So…" Her face swooped around the sad-looking present, the way somebody might examine a glass-encased museum display. "…what is it? An old gum wrapper? An IOU note you forgot to mail to the costume designer of _The Outsiders_ for stealing their wardrobe?"

"Ouch," F.P. said, still grinning. In fact, he was almost bouncing in his seat, had the tired cushion allowed it. "Why don't you just open it and find out?"

"If this is anthrax―"

"Then at least you'll die by my side. Think of the Smiths."

Alice glared at him, but plucked the paper from his palm. He watched eagerly as she smoothed back the worn fold lines, revealing… not much more than a couple of smudges: black and red. F.P. wanted to jog her memory, but she seemed to be getting there on her own, head tipping to the side as nostalgia grabbed her hard by the tear ducts.

"It's your phone number," he finally blurted, when she just kept looking at it with that mushy expression on her face. "The first time you ever gave it to me."

She laughed in what sounded suspiciously like wonder―this unflappable journalist who could not be surprised.

"And you said, 'What do I need this for? I already know where you live,'" Alice reminded him. She laid the precious scrap on her knee and leaned her head back, staring into his eyes as her head pressed his arm. "I was so frustrated. You just… didn't get it." She laughed.

"Well, normally your flirting looked more like asking me if I'd be your target while you practiced throwing a knife, or stealing beers from the Wyrm and blaming me when someone noticed they were missing, or―"

Alice put a finger to his lips.

"Why do you still have this?"

She held up the number, thumb half-covering the crimson mark left so long ago by her printed kiss. That shade on her lips had had the ability to make F.P. act like even more of a fool for her, if he remembered correctly.

He shrugged. Easy question.

"I always had it."

"Always as in…"

"As in from the second you gave it to me 'til when I dug it out of those old pants three days ago. I kept it in that pocket. Unless," he amended, "I had it in my hand because I was calling you. Though, I think I had your number memorized after the third time I called."

Alice's face was warping and scrunching inward. Shit, he hadn't meant to draw tears from her on her birthday.

"Hey," he prompted anxiously, scooting forward on his cushion to grab hold of her knee. "What's wrong?"

Alice sniffled and gave him those old Alice eyes that said she needed him, she wanted him, and that somehow, due to some miracle, because of delusion or the alignment of the planets or a fluke in the course of their lives thanks to the interference of time travelers from the future, he was exactly what she wanted and needed.

"I almost feel bad about joking that you were trying to poison me," she said thickly, eyes shiny like the presents of jewellery he could no more afford to buy her now than when he'd been sixteen.

F.P. barked out a loud laugh and tugged her face into his chest.

"Happy Birthday, sweetheart," he mumbled into her hair.

"Thanks," Alice mumbled in response, hands wedging between his back and the couch so she could hug him. "I got exactly what I wanted."


	11. What is Love, Alex?

**Author's Note:**

From the "Writing Prompts" list, prompt 66: "Look, I don't have much time, but I wanted to say I love you."

* * *

"He looks like a fucking square," was Sweet Pea's assessment.

Toni whacked him over the head with a throw pillow.

"Shut up, asshole. I helped him pick out that shirt."

"Though the choice might have been improved upon if you'd consulted _moi_ , as I requested," Cheryl crooned passive aggressively.

"SHHHHH!" Fangs hissed at them, yanking his leg out of the way when Sweet Pea aimed a vicious kick in retaliation for being shushed. The TV show went to commercial. "Ugh! I missed the answer!" He flung himself back tragically into the couch.

Betty watched Cheryl roll her eyes.

"The category was 'Musicals on Film.' I doubt you didn't already know it."

Fangs mumbled a response.

"What?" Cheryl snapped, leaning across Toni to catch Fangs's eye.

"Pierce Brosnan," he said, mouth curving into a proud smile.

"I thought so," Cheryl concluded, sitting back with a smug expression on her face.

As they continued to banter and an ad for health insurance rolled to an ad for a fast food pizza chain, Betty shifted slightly out from under Jughead's arm and looked around for her mom. Alice was a secret _Jeopardy!_ nut, Betty knew, competitive to the point of swearing at the contestants for knowing answers she didn't and for pointlessly taunting them through the screen when the situation was reversed. Tonight, she hadn't sat down to join them, barely glancing at the TV before striding from the living room back into the kitchen.

Betty was certain it wasn't the company keeping her mom away from her guilty pleasure show; ever since things had really become serious between Betty and Jughead, he and the rest of the young Serpents had been putting in more and more frequent appearances at the Cooper house. Toni (and Cheryl, because they were a package deal) came over all the time to study. Sweet Pea and Fangs took advantage of their channel selection and Netflix subscription, flopping down on the couch and laying in binge-watching-paralysis for hours. Jughead appeared between regular meals for extra sustenance, though watchful Alice always made sure he didn't go upstairs with her daughter and was out of the house long before dark.

In fact, Betty knew exactly what was going on. Even though the show was pre-recorded, Alice was full of nervous energy because F.P. was one of the competitors.

As far as the Serpents' oft tossed around get-rich-quick schemes went, the plot to land F.P. on _Jeopardy!_ had sounded as tame as it was uncharacteristically legal. Betty had never really had occasion to consider the broadness of her boyfriend's father's intelligence; he had helped her family out in the past when they needed it, but a pervasive knowledge of the best way to dispose of a dead body wasn't an area of expertise Betty had yet seen be an asset to a mainstream game show contestant.

It turned out F.P. knew a lot more than even _he_ thought he did when the Serpents began surreptitiously testing him, probing with questions that were unusual, but not suspicious. When their ex-leader did become curious, they claimed it was for homework (Fangs), to prove Sweet Pea wrong about something (Toni), research for a writing project (Jughead), or some other plausible excuse. By the time they were taking it seriously enough to compare notes behind F.P.'s back and crosscheck the answers he'd given them, Betty and Cheryl were informed of the plan and used to alternately encourage and bully F.P. into beginning the process of becoming a contestant on the show. As it was pitched to the two girls, this was the perfect send-off for a man leaving decades of gang life behind him. It was a celebration, a way to help rehabilitate his image on a family friendly show, and… no one objected to him winning money.

And who would've guessed it, a former gang King and current small town comeback story was exactly the American everyman that the producers of the show wanted to put on TV.

Of course, Alice hadn't known until tonight when the show began (several Serpents in the room shouting 'THISSS ISSSS JEOPARDY!'―all out of sync) and F.P. was standing onstage, behind a podium, his initials scrawled large to claim the spot as his own. The man himself was home at his trailer at the moment, Betty assumed, too embarrassed to relive the whole thing with an audience who wouldn't shy from commenting on the experience, the questions, and, in Sweet Pea's case, his appearance.

They already knew he hadn't won (not first place anyway, but $2000 for coming second) because he'd called Jughead immediately after the taping and told him, but it didn't matter. Betty looked around her living room and saw five friends full of a joy that rarely showed itself in those faces. If only her mother would allow herself to enjoy it in the same way.

"Mom," Betty called as Alice carried yet another bowl of pretzels into the room (Jughead dove in with both hands). "It's coming back from commercial. Come sit by me."

Alice started to shake her head.

"No, Betty, I'm not finished in the kitchen―"

"I think you've unearthed all the snacks we own by now," Betty argued kindly. "No more excuses."

With a frustrated sigh, Alice came closer, finally perching herself on the arm of the couch.

"Hey, I wonder if―" Sweet Pea loudly began, until Toni elbowed him in the ribs.

"Quiet, nitwit. I want to hear F.P."

Fangs grabbed the remote and ratcheted the volume after Alex Trebek had interviewed the first two contestants and moved to F.P.'s podium. Not glancing over, Betty reached blindly for Alice's hand; her mother's fingers closed tightly around her own.

"And here we have F.P. Jones," Alex began. "Resident of a town called Riverdale. Tell me, what does 'F.P.' stand for?"

"Forsythe Pendleton. And before you ask," F.P. warned with a smirk, "no, that name's not any more common in Riverdale than it is here. Uh, except for my father. And my boy."

"I still prefer 'Hobo,'" Cheryl muttered.

"Bite me," Jughead shot back, but he wasn't really paying attention, eyes fixed on the screen. With her free hand, Betty rubbed his back, knowing how proud he was of his father.

"I also want to say one thing to my girl back home," F.P. continued hurriedly. "Alice?"

Betty heard her mother stop breathing and turned from the TV to regard her face instead.

"Look," F.P. continued, "I don't have much time, but I wanted to say I love you."

The camera focused on him long enough for one last big grin, then Alex led them back into the game.

Alice released Betty's hand, pushing away from the couch with her fingers going to her cheeks, possibly wiping away tears, but Betty couldn't be sure. She and Toni exchanged a glance that conveyed an _aww_ even without sound, while the rest of them went back to watching, answering, and disputing the responses of the contestants (even when they were correct).

Suddenly, her mother was storming back towards the front door, throwing a coat over her shoulders.

Betty, enlivened by the giddiness in the room and by her hunch based on _Jeopardy!_ -level knowledge of her mother's behaviour, shouted after her.

"And where are you off to?"

The chatter stopped, Serpents craning over the backs of couches to observe their exiting host. Alice boldly met each of their stares.

"Well, I'm going to F.P.'s, where else? He said he loved me, Elizabeth. You think that's a game?"

There was no time to point out the fact that F.P. had said it while _on_ a game show, because the front door was already slamming. Betty nestled in closer to Jughead on the couch and smiled into his shoulder as she heard her mother's car start outside.


	12. Apple of My Pie

**Author's Note:**

From the "Writing Prompts" list, prompt 19: "I could kill you right now!"

* * *

F.P. whistled as he climbed off his bike and twirled his keychain smartly around his finger. It was a beautiful day; the heat wave Riverdale had been sweating under for two weeks had finally broken after a thunderous storm the night before and the sky was a clean, windshield-washer-fluid blue, with just enough cottony clouds to keep things interesting. The smell of flowers drifted between houses, a breeze passing through every floral bush in the neighbourhood, and nearby, a blue jay was calling.

 _What more could I ask for?_ he wondered to himself, bounding up to the front door of the Cooper residence. Truly, it was the perfect day to be a free man, nearly three months sober, and finally learning to appreciate the great people he had in his life. F.P. opened the door that had been left unlocked in anticipation of his arrival. Yes sir, happiness was his at last.

"I COULD KILL YOU RIGHT NOW!"

F.P. stumbled backwards into the door that was softly closing, making it slam. The part of his brain still convinced he was a Serpent automatically assessed his surroundings, seeking a weapon for self-defence.

"Betty?" Alice called much more sweetly, helping F.P.'s heartrate slow down. "Is that you, honey?"

Giving himself a shake, F.P. headed for the kitchen, where his girlfriend's (he'd call her that no matter how many people told him he was too old to use the term) voice had originated.

"Nope, just me." He strode into the kitchen. "I didn't think you were expect―"

"THEN YOU CAN DAMN WELL REFER TO MY INITIAL GREETING!" Alice snapped.

F.P.'s eyes widened. He'd seen her mad, lots of times. In distress, infuriated, on a rampage. Never had he seen her so while covered in flour.

"Did I do something?" he asked tentatively, keeping his hands where Alice could see them while she seethed at him with her eyes, thankfully sticking to the far side of the island.

Alice's wild laugh made him shudder. With her severely yanked back hair, the smudges on her face, and apron askew, she looked like a Stepford Wife robot in the middle of an unrecoverable malfunction. He decided not to mention that.

"Do something? Yeah," Alice nodded frantically, scanning her eyes over the scattered ingredients in front of her, "there is one thing you did that you might recall." Abruptly, she lifted an empty cookie tray and banged it down hard, making F.P. jump and, once again, glance around for a weapon.

"I'm guessing this is about the baking." He offered a hesitant grin. "I thought you'd be flattered that I volunteered you to bake for the Fall Fair. It's a tradition and…" F.P. tripped over his words as Alice narrowed her eyes murderously at him, "… you like to bake."

"Oh, that's right!" she replied, calm yet cripplingly sarcastic. "I do! I _love_ to bake, F.P., you sweet considerate man, you," Alice gushed. F.P. was having trouble swallowing as his throat closed up in dread. "You know what I love to bake? Scones, banana bread, birthday cakes for my girls. NOT SIXTEEN FUCKING APPLE PIES!" she suddenly screamed.

"Um, sweetie," he started, taking a step towards her, "I thought they were gonna be peach?"

"THE STORE WAS ALL OUT!"

F.P. backed into the wall. He wondered whether or not he would see his knees knocking together like a cartoon character's if he looked down, but wasn't brave enough to break eye contact with the pie-baking predator his Alice had turned into.

"Why don't I swing back in an hour or two and see if you're ready―"

"Don't you dare walk out of his room, Forsythe Pendleton Jones, or I will dismantle that motorcycle with a spatula and a brick of shortening." She huffed a dislodged hair out of her face; the first crack in the Beware of Alice façade.

He approached with measured steps, eyes locked on hers.

"You got it, Al. What do you want me to do, help?" He glanced over the selection of ingredients―the pies in various stages of completion. "I gotta admit, I'm a little intimidated. The extent of my baking is French toast."

"I need more apples," she informed him. He flinched when she grabbed his elbow and pulled him behind the island next to her. "Relax. Slice these." She pointed to a bagged dozen. "Use this." Handed him a long, slim knife. "If you bleed, don't do it on my pies."

Eyebrows raised (maybe permanently), F.P. stared quickly down to the counter, setting into his task.

"When you're done there, pull up a chair and keep me company while I finish." The demanding look in her eyes softened with the smile F.P. gave her. "Ok?" she added.

"You sure you can trust me with that? Sitting in your kitchen?" he joked, taking his life in his hands.

Alice cocked her head to the side―a little sexy, a little threatening. Just the way he liked her.

"Keep mocking me and the first pie that comes out of the oven gets upended in your lap."

F.P. smirked at her.

"Fine, as long as you promise to lick it off."


	13. Happy Campers

**Author's Note:**

From the "Writing Prompts" list, prompt 21: "That doesn't even make sense."

* * *

"OK, YOU LAZY SACKS OF S―"

Alice elbowed F.P. hard in the stomach.

"―SUNSHINE," he amended, giving her a sly smirk before looking back to their panting, sunburnt contingent of children. "ONCE MORE THROUGH THE OBSTACLE COURSE AND NO SKIPPING THE CARGO NET!"

There was a universal groan until the most hyper of the bunch took off running, setting the rest in motion, compelled by pack mentality. Alice reached out and grabbed one particularly red-faced boy from the herd.

"You're done, Marco," she said kindly. "Why don't you run to the canteen and get a soda?"

The kid gave her a look of grateful exhaustion and stumbled off, sticking a hand out to jingle the wind chimes another cabin had made in their arts and crafts session.

"You're too nice to 'em," F.P. complained, settling back onto a picnic table while he observed the spectacle of eleven children shoving across a rope bridge and scrabbling up a tree. "WHOEVER'S DONE FIRST GETS TO EAT MY DESSERT ON FRIDAY!" he shouted.

"That doesn't even make sense," Alice argued. "This bunch is only here 'til Wednesday."

F.P. shrugged carelessly and started picking at the splintered edge of the table.

Alice tugged at the too-tight sleeves of her camp counsellor uniform. She'd been dying to cut them off and slice the thing into a muscle shirt since it was doled out to her by management at the beginning of camp, but she also wanted to keep her summer job. Riverdale Summer Camp was nothing if not conformity disguised by face paint, sunscreen, and ghost stories by the fire. She hopped up onto the table, keeping a foot of space between F.P. and herself. The kids had bombarded them with questions and jeers from day one about being boyfriend and girlfriend, and Alice didn't want to fuel the rumours that ran as swiftly as sugar through their eight-to-ten-year-old veins.

"And you're being too mean, by the way. This isn't boot camp, dumbass."

As she spoke, a kid missed her footing and fell a yard out of a tree. Alice started to rise, but the girl popped back up and gave her a thumbs up. Resilient. It made her feel old at sixteen.

"Come on, Al. These are Northside brats." He waved a hand to indicate the tumbling mass. "Their parents should be thanking us for toughening them up a little."

She turned her head to stare at him.

"You really want to be responsible for destroying another Northsider's innocence?"

Before F.P. could answer, Alice bounded down and hurried away, clapping her hands to encourage the group across the finish line of the obstacle course. She let them high five her, scream their accomplishment into her face at the top of their lungs, even let a boy climb onto her for a piggyback ride to their next scheduled activity―which was going to be snack time, for these maniacs to eat in silence and reenergize.

She glanced back once to make sure her co-counsellor was following; he was, curling his arms alternatingly while emitting a theatrical groan with a kid hanging off each bicep by their fingertips, giggling away. Alice sighed. Scarfing another cherry freezie wasn't going to be enough to soothe her insecurities or bolster her to get through another week and a half of camp sharing a cabin with F.P. Maybe giving in to her impulsive desire to sleep with him on the night before they checked in as counsellors two months ago really hadn't been a great idea. Maybe it wasn't fair to fling that back at him either, but they were _always_ together here. Fuck him if he expected her to be the one to act like a grownup.

F.P. was a little less hard to swallow for the rest of the day. It was like he knew he'd screwed up somehow, even if he didn't really want to admit it or ask Alice what was wrong. He caught her watching him help a fussy, dexterity-challenged kid cut up her hotdog at dinner, then again when he was double-knotting the shoelaces of their clumsiest camper so the kid didn't trip when he ran. It was kind of sweet.

Half an hour before lights-out, Alice suggested they go down to the lake for canoeing. F.P. didn't fight her, or rile up the kids with some kind of boys vs. girls bullshit. They checked and double-checked everybody's lifejacket and pushed out the canoes, then silently chose their own and drifted out onto the water. Even the bitchy, hardscrabble girl she'd been trying so hard to be since fleeing life on the Northside had to admit that this view made the summer gig worth it. The open space across the lake. The stars. The kids chattering in the background. Alice held the sides of the boat and let her gaze shift to F.P. He was already staring at her with his chin on his fist. They floated.

That night, she found the soft noises of him settling into bed more comforting than ever―maybe she was sentimental, or just too aware of the summer being almost over. Thanks to some sort of mix up, they'd ended up with a bunkbed instead of two singles. F.P. had blamed prejudice against the Southside (since, one cabin over, Fred and Sierra hadn't had any problems), but Alice had secretly been thankful. Being on two levels made it a lot harder to try and sneak into each other's beds. Not least because the ladder creaked.

Tonight, it didn't matter that they weren't next to each other. They'd only had sex that one time, and she hadn't stayed the night, so she didn't really miss him next to her now. The best thing was just hearing him breathe. That sound also told her he was still awake.

"Hey," she whispered, conscious of the campers in the next room and the open door.

"Hey, Al."

She nestled her cheek against her lopsidedly-stuffed pillow.

"They're not that bad, right? The kids?"

"Nah," he answered. She heard him roll over. "Not as bad as that kid in week three who threw up on my shoes."

Alice laughed, quietening it under her palm.

"Or the one who almost poked my eye out with his marshmallow stick," she added.

"Yeah, but you smelled good," F.P. argued before coming to a sudden halt. "Marshmallow-y." She smiled to herself.

"F.P.?"

"Yeah, Alice?"

"Do you think you would… would you ever want to have kids?"

He snorted loudly, briefly interrupting the drone of insects from outside the screened window.

"No way. I'm looking forward to getting out of here as much as you are." She didn't know if he meant the camp or the town as a whole. "Even if you _are_ better at hiding it."

"Yeah," Alice answered numbly.

"Night," F.P. said through a yawn, probably not realizing that her customary 'goodnight' never came.

It wasn't because she was sleeping. In fact, Alice laid awake for a long time, hand on her belly where the bump hadn't yet begun to show.


End file.
